Electronic commerce including auctions, direct sales and offers for sale have become a fixture in online activity. Ecommerce combined with the increasing popularity of mobile computing, mobile blogging, micro blogging, tweeting, mobile web activity and similar mobile communication, offers buyers and sellers the possibility of finding and providing specialized goods and services, antiques, used items, and other items. Social platforms including social networking and social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, You Tube and other socially interactive sites have also become popular for conducting ecommerce and online ecommerce activity. The merging of ecommerce and social platforms allow users to take advantage of how they use the web and internet which is both connecting with each other through their social graph and accessing the web and internet whenever, wherever and however they want. Such an integrated environment provides both buyers and sellers with the need to achieve accurate and timely shipping information for quick and accurate shipment of goods domestically and internationally through such ecommerce transactions and social experiences.
Ecommerce transactions including auctions, direct sales and offers, provide sellers the benefit of price competition among buyers, creating markets for goods and services which are worldwide and which are becoming increasingly mobile. Various types of goods are offered for sale and purchased across thousands of different categories. Such variety requires a universal, updateable, modifiable and intuitive database. The increasing number of categories and sub-categories that are being created to accommodate online ecommerce transactions cause the standard harmonized tariff schedule (HTS) and harmonized tariff code (HTC) classification code databases to be out of date and inaccurate in many respects and instances. There is a need for a taxonomically updateable and intuitive database which can learn and update the HTS and HTC classification data in real time. Such a system and method would benefit from providing modules for adding specific words, phrases, codes or images to imported HTS and HTC classification databases. It would be beneficial to provide the option to selectively update individual and chosen categories based on user input.
In addition, collectors, hobbyists and other purchasers participate in social networking activity, are drawn to ecommerce environments, and are interested in consummating transactions seamlessly without leaving the purchasing platform. Hence a seamless ecommerce environment with mobile access and the ability to complete the ecommerce transaction timely, without interruption and with certainty and security to both the buyer and seller is important and central to the ecommerce, social networking, social ecommerce and social selling platforms. In addition, it is desirable to have a shipping module that can be integrated into any ecommerce platform for providing the benefits described herein.
Ecommerce sites including online auctions have typically experienced the inability to accurately provide shipping costs typically leading to unexpected shipping costs, particularly for international shipments. The inability to accurately quote shipping rates and associated costs taking into consideration specific product attributes are persistent problem for sellers and buyers alike. Thus, a need exists for the parties to such ecommerce transactions to have access to better information in advance about the classification of goods, their associated duties and real shipping costs for their items including both domestic and international shipping options. It is desirable to improve the accuracy of the shipping classification and hence the shipping quote, and provide competitive shipping costs through use of a system that can update shipping information including classification codes, key word descriptors and item classification information taxonomically and on a real time basis.
It is desirable to provide an online shipping system and method having taxonomic international tariff harmonization capabilities which provides for the ability to learn details of products including key words, attributes and the like as that information is keyed in by the buyer or seller. It is also desirable to provide an online shipping system that is easy for buyers and sellers to use, and allows a buyer to easily locate an item for immediate purchase, available to make an offer or place a bid and easily complete a purchase, obtain accurate shipping classification and costs then complete shipping in a secure, safe, seamless and customer friendly environment.